When you finally get time on your own it is fascinating to explore the wanderings of the mind. Now that my physical exhaustion is dissipating (still did not quite make it to the gym this morning, but did do yoga last night), my mind is starting to snap, crackle and pop again letting the electrodes create synapses in my brain.
My contemplation this morning was on making decisions that greatly alter the course of our lives.
Despite the first eight years of my life, I have had a fairly smooth path. While it may not have been the road more travelled on the way there (to 8yrs old me), once I got there, the road was pretty smooth and felt like any other life of a ‘simple farm’ girl. I continued to follow the more travelled road or more desired to be travelled road until it came time for me to truly make my own decisions.
Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken has been used to celebrate or even encourage that we take the roads less travelled by the ‘norm’. We have touted it as being daring or taking a risk to forge ahead in less comfortable ways. It is true, this indeed does make “all the difference” in how to look at life, how we live life, how we reflect on life.
Yet, what if we were to look at his poem as a warning emphasizing “I shall be telling this with a sigh…”. His looking back “somewhere ages and ages hence:…” might be considered a bit of regret that he did not take the easier more travelled path. Perhaps there truly is nothing wrong with following where others have already led and allowing ourselves to take it easy.
While we can argue both sides to this on many levels; thus making it such a fantastic poem, I go back to my own current wanderings.
While for some, it may seem “living the dream” by taking the “road less travelled by”, to others it may seem silly – for what is wrong with an easier way – in the end that is what we all want, isn’t it?
In any case, I have a writer’s dream which to most would be considered the less travelled by road. However, I also like stability and security especially when it comes to finances, lifestyle, etc. So, there is this constant dilemma and argument inside my head. Therefore, I ponder and in many ways envy those who are content with the regular day-to-day of getting up, going to work, coming home, sleeping and repeating each day. Those who are truly satisfied with this way of life are a little bit of a role model to me lately.
But then, the dreamer in me returns….
~T π
